“Just say the goddamned line!”

So I’ve moved into Terry Schreiber‘s advanced acting class. Terry was recently featured in a great article in Backstage called The New Generation of Acting Teachers. He has the best quote in the article, where he goes off on actors who don’t say the words exactly as written in a script. Pick it up.

The vibe in Friday Class is definitely different than Monday Class. For one thing, there’s many older actors in class. I’d say over half are over 40. And I’m really happy that’s true. It opens up a lot more possibilities for scenes (I get to do a Treplev/Sorin scene from The Seagull later this month with a wonderful actor named Peter). I don’t know too many people in the class, but the ones I do know are quality folk. For one, there’s the indomitable Laurence Cantor with whom I was in The Birthday Party.

The format is slightly different too. There’s generally no exercises, just scene work. And for the scenes, Terry usually works only one or two playwrights at a time, so the class becomes very focused on the work of those playwrights. Right now we are doing Shaw and Chekhov. I’m currently working on a scene from Major Barbara with a great actress, Jen Maguire who was in the studios excellent recent production, Better Living.

The studio was nominated for a ton of IT awards this years. I’m especially proud to see Terry nominated for directing How I learned to Drive along with my very good friend Jess Draper, whose performance in the play was so perfect, so heartbreaking, so frightening that I was literally unable to say anything to him about it until several days after seeing it.

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